Alpha Status Met

hey folks,

Quick update. We did our alpha presentations to our mentors and some industry vets and things went swimingly...aside from a crappy projector that shows images far too dark. They liked where we went with the game. We've accomplished (and then some) all the requirements for alpha status and are now hard at work charging towards Beta.

Beta comes on the 14th of this month so not much time to do...well anything aside from work on the game. The end is in our sites....Anyone from Relic out there want to offer me a job before we grad and I am inundated with job offers?! ....k seriously though I need a job end of Feburary

Dev Diary Numero Seven

So,

That was a well needed break. Development slowed to a crawl, as predicted working from home for a group of 5 is not a terribly productive process. We had sicknesses, traveling, difficulty communicating and, of course, the holidays and family.

A comprehensive bug list has been made by yours truly while our PM works on fresh eyes work and PM duties. Our coder was tasked with refining the AI which is sorely needed (Due to our dismemberment feature, out AI cannot make use of the extremely useful and sorely missed Kismet AI) So, our coder is literally learning to make basic AI on the go. Something I am sure future employers will value. Our level designer has been battling the elements in an effort to get back to the UK to visit his family. He made it, but had no access to a computer Circa later than 2000 so...He couldn't do a whole lot of level design work. He got back to Canada early enough to do a bit of level tweaking, but not as much as we had all hoped. Our 3d Guy is simply AWOL. we're all assuming he just had an awesome restful break.

Anyways, this is my blog and my dev diary so, onto my tasks. As I mentioned above I compiled a comprehensive bug list. I concentrated, obviously, on larger game breaker bugs of which I found a fair share. In addition to that I've been writing up suggestions for enemy placement, level layout, gameplay flow and intuitive instructions. I have plans to make some changes to textures for several gameplay objects to emphasize (or in some cases de-emphasize them) I also have a nice list of sounds to create.

Now, on my first day back (tomorrow) I'll be making a prioritized list of these bugs and then I'll be handing them out to team members to get fixed. As anyone in QA can tell you. fix two bugs, switch on or create one. So, better to start now than in 2 weeks for QA. I hold no illusions given our time frame and inexperienced team that we will have our fair share of bugs, but it is my goal to showcase my QA talents and part of that will be starting early. I'll also be commandeering our 3d modeler for QA work. He's shown little interest in doing work aside from 3d but did express some interest in QA so that should work out nicely.

In addition to that work tomorrow I'll be creating the sounds I have discovered we will be needing after my test passes, I am sure the team will have some more sounds to add to my list as well. I am still counting myself lucky we had the foresight to prioritize our sound list and begin work on it with the collaborators early because they've been out of contact and have seemingly lost interest in the project. We've gone far and above out of our way to accommodate them, but they seem too busy and have little interest in completing the project they agreed to. Ah well, luckily we have all the stuff we need and I have a lot of interest in sound design in addition to game design so it will be fun to complete.

Speaking of sound, since I do not pro tools I had to get my hands on a copy of Reaper (great price for what is it by the way) to edit sounds in an effort to create music. I spent a day or two on my break learning the program and creating music for the game. I am just too used to pro tools now, even though I find the program...odious to say the least (buggy, buggy, BUGGY) I am still used to it, as such. I do not feel any of the music I created for the game over the break with Reaper will be used for the game. I'll be creating some more music for the game when I am back with the group and have a copy of the oh-so-finicky pro tools.

Approximately one month until industry night, man I need a job...